5 Ways to Create a more Skateable City

Skateboarding is often something we design out of our cities. We install metal bumps on concrete ledges and extra railings and barriers where they otherwise wouldn’t be needed. We put up signs with big red slashes through them. The message is clear: this space isn’t for you.

But what if we designed our city to be more skateable, not less?

With the City of Toronto’s new Skateboard Strategy, the City is hoping to do just that. The plan was created in close collaboration with skateboarders around the city, including the Toronto Skateboarding Committee—a great group of people advocating for more and better skateboarding infrastructure in the city.

The goal of the strategy is to create more and better skateparks in the city and also better programs to reach those that want to learn. There are currently 14 skateboard parks in Toronto (12 permanent, 2 seasonal), which you can find in every corner of the city. The findings in the strategy will be incorporated into the City’s facilities master plan—a long-term plan for the city’s parks and recreation facilities that’s being worked on right now.

Here’s a few of the highlights from the Skateboard Strategy:

Mobile skateparks

This idea stems from a pilot the City ran this past summer where a van stuffed with skatepark supplies like obstacles, ramps, and skateboards drove to areas of the city that were underserved by skateparks in order to build a quick, temporary space. It would be great to see this program expanded. But I also love the idea of just a “mobile games van” in general, which delivers a recreation staff member and soccer balls, toys, etc., to parks that don’t easy access to these otherwise. So many parks, particularly outside the downtown, are simply grass and maybe a bench. This would really help liven them up and provide play opportunities.

Skate dots

This idea recognizes that sometimes you don’t need to build a big, expensive skatepark, but instead can create small skateable locations in existing parks—what the city is called skate dots. These could be a single railing or ramp built into a park or pathway that allows people to practice. “They provide an introductory skateboarding experience for local users,” the Strategy says. “And can function as social gathering spaces.”

Skateable art

This is an idea I really love and kind of follows from the “skate dots” idea—creating public art pieces that are actually designed for people to skateboard on. It reminds me a little bit of the opposite of what the wave decks down along Queen’s Quay have become. The wave decks would be great for skateboarding if the City hadn’t put up weird, awkward railings so they couldn’t be used.

Permits

Permits, the perennial headache. Turns out you actually can’t permit skateparks currently and so this limits the ability to host events and competitions since only the City can put an event on at a skatepark. Any permitting process would, of course, have to balance the needs of all users and ensure that skateparks weren’t being taken over for events too often. But how great would it be for groups to be able to host local competitions and events in their skatepark?

A skatepark at Nathan Phillips Square?

This wasn’t in the strategy, but at committee where the strategy was being discussed, Councillors voted to have staff look at creating a skatepark on the currently empty space on the west corner of Nathan Phillips Square. I love the idea of a visible skatepark right in the heart of downtown.